Archive for the Fat of the Land Category

Two little-noticed stories during the year-end holiday period demonstrated the ominous, increasing stresses on our industrial food-supply system, and the absence of any rational, let alone effective, measures to safeguard it.

Even after you have accepted the degree to which money has locked down the American political system, and hence its government; after you realize that there are really no more Democrats and Republicans in American politics, just Moneycrats and losers; it can still be astonishing what Money can do.

In Ohio this year, Big Agriculture decided it was threatened by the pesky people from the Humane Society of the United States who have persuaded several states to moderate the brutal treatment of animals in factory farms — such things as confining nursing sows in cages so small they can neither turn around nor even get up. Widely broadcast videos of the misery and brutality that is routinely involved in providing our beef, pork and poultry have aroused the disgust of enough people that the usual chant of “leave us alone our your food prices will go up,” or “leave us alone or we’ll stop creating jobs,” aren’t working so well any more. Continue reading →

Even when the Washington Post gets around to placing the blame for the H1N1 Flu pandemic squarely where it belongs — on industrial agriculture — it does so obliquely, and with the mindset created by the industry’s flacks that prevents us from facing its increasingly dire consequences. Continue reading →

Suppose that the company that supplies our water notified us that from now on it would deliver water that was perfectly safe — as long as we boiled it before we touched it. We would be in the streets with placards and pitchforks before noon. Yet the food industry takes the position that its responsibilities are met when it delivers to us meat that is safe — as long as it is heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit before we touch it. And we have accepted this with the silence of the proverbial lambs.

The New York Times has given this remarkable arrangement some attention with a long take [“E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection”] that showcased the plight of a 22-year old woman nearly killed, and left paralyzed, by a hamburger tainted with E. Coli and not sufficiently cooked. (See! It was the cook’s fault! In this case her mother, now plagued by guilt.) Like most writing on the subject, the Times spends a lot of time emphasizing the “there oughtta be a law” aspect of the issue, faulting the US Department of Agriculture for its lackadaisacal inspection practices, as if we could somehow legislate or inspect our way away from the effects of this industrial weapon of mass digestion.

The Times does a very good job of detailing how hamburger is assembled, making it clear that it should be handled in our kitchens in the same way as any other lethal biohazard. And it profiles the Mafia-like ethics of the hamburger grinders who refuse to sell their product to anyone who threatens to test it for purity. “Nice store you got here. Be a shame if anything happend to it.” (Once again, Costco stands out here as one of the few ethical companies on the planet: they test all the burger they buy before they mix it or process it further.)

But the Times piece does not point out that the food industry not only refuses to control this threat to public health — it created it! By force-feeding corn to grass eaters, industry turns the contents of their four stomachs into acid that makes the cows sick and kills most of the E. Coli bacteria that used to l;ive there happily and benevolently, helping in the digestion of grass. The surviving bacteria were 1) acid tolerant and thus able to survive where they had never been able to before — in human stomachs, and 2) teenage mutant ninjas with some weird weapons, such as incredibly potent shiga toxins, as few as 50 of which can perforate your intestines, infect your blood and destroy your kidneys.

But, hey, you’re perfectly safe as long as you, or your hamburger provider, heat the meat to 160 degrees, sterilize all utensils, pans and dishes that touched it prior to heating, and incinerate all clothing, towels or furniture that came in contact with it.

The Times says that the paralyzed young woman “ran out of luck in a food-safety game of chance.” They should have named the game. It’s not canasta, it’s Russian Roulette.

Suppose that the company that supplies our water notified us that from now on it would deliver water that was perfectly safe — as long as we boiled it before we touched it. We would be in the streets with placards and pitchforks before noon. Yet the food industry takes the position that its responsibilities are met when it delivers to us meat that is safe — as long as it is heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit before we touch it. And we have accepted this with the silence of the proverbial lambs. Continue reading →

Industrial agriculture is in the process of taking down another country. For half a century, Argentina has prospered by raising the world’s finest grass-fed cattle on its vast plains. In the process, it did not degrade its land, nor did it abuse its animals. But in the world according to industry, enough is never enough.

According to the Washington Post today [“Day of the Gaucho Waning in Argentina”], the Masters of the Argentinian Universe are moving as quickly as they can to destroy their country by plowing under their sustainable grass to make way for huge expanses of corn and soybeans, and shunting their cattle off pasture and into feedlots.

The Argentinian Pampas, like our own Western Plains, is hot and arid. When you strip the soil of its protective grass, it blows and washes away. When you plow the soil, severing the myriad arterial connections linking the sunshine and water of the surface with the minerals and organic material below, the soil begins to die and lose its fertility. The industrial response is to apply massive doses of fertilizer. made with and from petrochemicals, followed by herbicides, pesticides and fungicides as needed, and in shot order the soil is entirely dead, anmd leaving.

As I report in Brace for Impact, since the 1970s American agriculture has lost, for every pound of food of fiber grown, seven pounds of topsoil. Who can blame Argentina for envying us?

Then of coure there are the cattle, fitted by eons of evolution to eat one thing — grass. They have developed four stomachs, assembled a team of microbes that pre-digests their meal for them by fermenting the grass, to turn straw into steak. But it takes three years for a cow on grass to reach slaughter weight. And its lean meat is not as desirable to today’s overweight, undernourished, diabetic and touchy consumer as meat that is marbled and juicy with saturated fat.

So Industry snatched the calf off pasture at six months or so and puts it in a concentration camp where for the rest of its life it stands in its own manure being force fed — corn. Corn makes the cow sick. Its turns its digestive system acidic (normally it’s neutral) and the animal suffers from acidosis — heartburn — often severe enough to cause physical damage. Microbes trying to ferment corn generate an excess of both gas and a thinck slime that can trap the gas, causing bloat that can kill.These chronic afflictions leave the cattle open to opportunistic infections by such things as pneumonia.

In order to keep these sick and miserable animals alive long enough to slaughter, Industry pumps them full of antibiotics to ward off the more serious and deadly infections, a practice that has a number of side effects that pose serious threats to human health.

Unnatural? Rodrigo Troncoso scoffs that the notion. The General manager of the Argentine Feedlot Chamber, Troncoso tiold the Washington Post: “Who is to say what’s natural and what’s not natural? What’s natural is for a cow to grow, to reproduce and to die.”

Yes, and God intended topsoil to blow in the wind, his creatures to live in misery, and people to swell up, get diabetes and die.

Brace for imnpact, Argentina.

Industrial agriculture is in the process of taking down another country. For half a century, Argentina has prospered from raising the world’s finest grass-fed cattle on its vast plains. In the process, it did not degrade its land, nor did it abuse its animals. But in the world according to industry, enough is never enough. Continue reading →

One of the premises of BRACE for IMPACT is that industialism concentrates risk as it seeks economies of scale. Nowhere is this more visible — or more dangerous — than in the food industry. This morning’s case in point is the news that 65 people in 29 states have been sickened by the potentially deadly bacterium E. coli 0157. Continue reading →